As a regular (but not heavy) user of Facebook who manages "Sony Digital Photography" and "Financial Markets" I offer the following observations that negate the value of growing the user base as Facebook moves to the emerging markets:

1. The number of requests with users belonging to too many groups increased (expect "spam" contacts, or fake accounts to grow exponentially)
2. Click-through for content is beyond pitiful. Even when I post content that correctly forecasts an increase in a stock, no one clicks it. If I post humor, the image gets lots of "likes." What's the value of content if users refuse to leave the site?
3. I have not added a "friend" in over a month. On Google+ I received over 300 "followers." As it will be shown, Google will eat away at Facebook as anonymity and random connections come back to vogue.

At the start of any new product, establishing market share and becoming the dominant player is critical. Google is the example here. It quickly learned how to monetize its search market share by selling adverts. Facebook has not been a startup for a long time, but has failed to emulate Google's success.

I access FB on my iPad these days. The FB iPad app carries exactly ZERO advertising - for which I'm thankful, but apprehensive as to how badly the overall experience will be degraded once FB does attempt to introduce advertising. Google's ads are intrusive, but easily ignored and not a deal-breaker. They don't destroy the "search experience". Achieving the same balance on FB, I think, is much more difficult. You're basically a stranger butting in, and interrupting a conversation between friends. No-one wants you there.

It will be a tough problem to solve. If ads break the "among friends" experience, the way is open - despite FB's current market share - to a competitor which does it right. Google has done this before. Anyone remember Alta Vista?

$24 as a share price is based on a highly optimistic Price/Earnings ratio for FB, based on the myth of how easy it is to "monetise" traffic and noise in the 'information economy'. FB's share price is like watching the dot com bubble implode in slow motion.

Two thirds of FB users are actually playing games on Zynga, with a lot of traffic and chatter incidental to that: look at the financials for Zynga, to see why FB's share price is doomed to spiral downwards. No one in their right mind would knowingly buy any high value item based on a FB "recommendation" - they transact electronically through more established and secure trade platforms.

Despite the hype about eCommerce and derivative financial trades, in real life buyers want actual goods in return for their money, not their identities and demographics being sold without their permission. Grow up, get a real job where you don't steal your employer's time, and ditch FB.

I don't want to comment Facebook's stockmarket and profits because it's their business to solve.As a platform that can stretch social net,Facebook will develop better and better because more and more people that I know are using it.

The social networking market in the US is certainly near its saturation point, as shown by the decline in the total number of users in the US from last year. The real question is how Facebook will respond to the fast-growing internet population in emerging markets. Facebook can continue, most likely unsuccessfully, to milk the US market for additional ad revenue, but the true opportunity for growth lies in other countries.

It's near its saturation point, true, but I think there still exists a market for smaller-scale, niche social media sites that could begin to chip away at the bloated Facebook and Twitter.

I hear more and more people every day express their frustration at Facebook: the busy layout, annoying app/gift requests, etc. At the same time I am seeing more buy-in to applications like Instagram, Pinterest, and others. There will be churn.

There will be churn, without a doubt. Companies like Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Pinterest will continue to settle themselves in niche markets. Whether or not Facebook will be nibbled to death by ducks is probably not a matter of if, but when.

Facebook's success, however, has been in incorporating features of its competitors that would have otherwise given them a competitive advantage. As soon as Twitter was viewed as a credible threat, Facebook began its live news feed. The network externalities that Facebook has are also extremely difficult for competitors to overcome. Enter the importance of establishing themselves in new markets where network externalities haven't been established.

I take user complaints about Facebook with a grain of salt. Nearly anytime Facebook changes its layout, there is extreme user dissatisfaction in the short-run. Users don't like change, but change is necessarily in order for Facebook to remain at the top of the ever-evolving social networking market.

The emerging markets are a blessing and a curse for facebook. They represent the largest untapped source of potential users, but the revenue they bring in per-additional-user is much less in emerging countries than in developed countries. That is how the US with 150m out of 955m bring in half of the total revenue. If facebook intends to continue growing their revenue base, they need to figure out how to increase the margins on these new users in addition to protecting the margins on the developed country users (with mobile, as mentioned in the article).

It's ordinary to witness "a night blue-chips", for it showed less intrinsic value. Facebook is still a large corporation, which will cherish its chance to be blue chips. Facebook has a long way to go.
I guess it should be better if FB were to devise more products online and offline. Ads is only a part to make money, which has a definite limit.
FB will be better, for it has billions of fan.

I have dozens email account with Yahoo, Google, Sina, etc.... Received invitaions to join facebook from everyone of my email accounts....

When I click 'yes', facebook looks my email and invite everyone has an account in my email adress, when I click 'yes' on the list, facebook goes to someone who was on the list of my email address and invite everyone from his/her account, I keep on clicking 'yes' for almost one hour and more name are coming and waiting for me to click 'yes'.... friends of friends, friends of common friends, etc....

Why don't you try it? I believe you can click 'yes' for days? billions can be added to your list of friends, multiple times....

I don't know how many real fan? I can assure you it is not billions, may be millions? and lots of them are not active? may be someone hates it too?

no wonder thatz how facebook gain profits-through ads???but im just curious how many users will pay attention to that.as for me,at least it's quite dull .whereas im born in 90s,hardly do i use facebook because of chinese goverment's tightening control!Alaso>_

You could argue that Facebook got their timing perfect. Capital raising done at the peak of optimism, the punters left holding the baby. The fact that many people lost immediately is due to their expectations of a quick win. Facebook wont mind the share price drop - they got the money, now on with the job of building revenues. Many long term investors likely got in after the initial plunge and will ride the slow road to growth.

EVER since Facebook made its stockmarket debut on June 18th, its new shareholders have had ample reason to grumble.

Since it's shareholders are, pretty much by definition, people who learned nothing from the dot com bubble a decade or more ago, it is hard to work up much sympathy. Facebook was (and is) pretty much a type case of companies which are all hype and minimal reality. The smart move would be to sell such companies short. But clearly the current shareholders did not do so.

Then again, perhaps not.
Perhaps you have simply just not succumbed, lemming-like, to the Facebook fad. Perhaps you just prefer to communicate in more traditional ways, including those where the content (and the intended audience) has a little more substance? Rather than, for example, a very important FB post that even includes pictures of the food one is having for lunch...